


The Unusual Tale of Shirley the Squib and Brian the Boggart

by Felpata_Lupin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boggarts, Children story, Community: HPFT, Dysfunctional Family, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Purebloods, Squibs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 02:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7202738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felpata_Lupin/pseuds/Felpata_Lupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>You've probably heard or read somewhere that no one knows what a Boggart looks like. Well, that's not entirely true.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unusual Tale of Shirley the Squib and Brian the Boggart

You've probably heard or read somewhere that no one knows what a Boggart looks like. Well, that's not entirely true.

Boggarts know, for example. And so does Brian, because he's a Boggart. And so does Shirley, even if she isn't.

* 

Our story starts with two Boggarts. Now, Boggarts normally like solitude, which is why they prefer dark and narrow spaces and why it is in their nature to assume scary forms to keep bothering strangers away. But there's a time in any Boggart's life when a he-Boggart meets a she-Boggart and from two solitary creatures comes a family.

That's what happened to Brian's parents one foggy day, in the dusty and messy attic of the ancient, imposing manor of some ancient, wealthy and illustrious Pureblood family. That's how Brian came to be.

That's also Brian's favourite story to listen before bed, and Daddy-Boggart's second favourite to tell, after that time he'd scared the illustrious family's House-Elf nearly to death by turning into a broken vase, the vase in question being the house mistress' most loved one.

_I was feeling so lonely, and it was weird, because I'd never felt lonely before... Nor after. So I decided to get out of my drawer and maybe scare some of those ugly portraits. And then I saw your Mum,_ Daddy-Boggart would say, with his cavernous voice that was already scary enough in Brian's opinion. _She'd just got out of that old trunk. You know, the one in the corner, with the silver inlays. And let me tell you, she was the most beautiful and terrifying unshaped creature I've ever met. Never knew nothingness could have such a glamorous shade of black._

Because that's what Boggarts look like, in case you were still wondering. They look like nothingness. A bit like a black hole, but without all the hyper-gravitational field thing, otherwise Earth itself would be sucked anytime a Boggart came to be, and then there would be no world, and no Boggarts... Anyway, that's what a Boggart looks like, and Brian thought it was scary and boring at the same time. He really couldn't see how it could be glamorous in any way.

* 

That foggy day, the one when Brian's parents first met, there was no one around the manor except for Scandy, the overmentioned House-Elf, who was incredibly busy with all things that needed to be done before his master and mistress got back. He snapped his fingers and, while the rollers painted the walls of the newly-arranged chamber in sunny yellow, and while freshly-washed white sheets arranged themselves in the right drawers, he allowed himself to waste a second worrying about his mistress' health.

His mistress was in S.Mungo's. Not because she was ill or because she got hurt by some backfiring spell. The reason she was in hospital is because she was waiting for a baby, and now the time had come when the baby should be born.

That foggy day, the one when Brian's parents first met, was the day when Ruben Myron Alexander Selwyn and his twin sister Shirley Morgan Alexandra Selwyn came to light.

* 

Shirley was a lively, cheerful child. She was very petite, with huge blue eyes and golden curls for hair. She loved to run in the garden and pick up and blow the dandelions, to put waltz discs in her father's phonograph and go pirouetting around the huge ballroom and to sneak into the kitchen without her parents noticing and help old Scandy making biscuits.

Scandy liked his young mistress a lot, because she was always very kind to him, so he allowed her to help and never reprimanded her for eating the raw dough in the process. He would then punish himself by putting his ears in the oven with the cookies, but he still felt it was worth it.

Ruben was quite Shirley's opposite. Very tall for his age, with ebony-black hair and dark brown eyes, always showing perfect behaviour and refinement.

But he became pretty devilish when dealing with his sister. He would pull all sorts of pranks on her. He would cut her hair while she was sleeping, add salt instead of sugar in her tea, or even put pupper-fish eyes under the covers of her bed. And the worst part of it was that if Shirley told her parents they would never believe her, cause they thought Ruben was too perfectly behaved to do such petty things. Shirley didn't love her brother. At all.

* 

Brian had brothers too. Baako, the eldest, had already reached maturity and left the nest when Brian was too young to actually remember him. According to Buster, the middle one, though, he was truly, very scary, so Brian didn't really regret not having known him better.

Brian was an unusual Boggart. Solitude and darkness simply didn't suit him. Nor did fear.

He often left the safety of the grandfather clock where his family resided just to take a peek at the sunshine from the round window of the attic. His father was clearly worried for his sanity, but his mother always defended him saying that he was young.

Brian was neither mad nor too young, just different. He liked colours, and warmth, and happy feelings. He envied a lot Buster, who had started to venture into the manor to practise his scaring skills over the inhabitants. But Brian didn't want to leave the attic with that purpose. He was only curious to see how humans lived and what they looked like.

Buster was the only one who actually understood that his little brother was genuinely different, and that was exactly the reason he enjoyed so much teasing and scaring him. Brian didn't love his brother. At all.

* 

Shirley's parents were always very harsh with her, so she couldn't honestly affirm to have had the most cheery childhood. Yet life didn't start to go truly bad until Ruben started to show signs of magic.

They were four and playing a round of Gobstones together, under the attentive, severe stare of their Mum. Ruben lost, but when the liquid spouted from his Gobstone, he willed it to deviate towards his sister instead. And it did. Shirley got hit squarely in the face and she started crying indignantly, but her mother didn't seem to care. She hugged her perfect son, instead, profusely chanting her praises for his first burst of accidental magic.

The days passed, and they became weeks, and months. Shirley's parents were looking at her always more closely, in the wait of seeing her magic spring out at any moment. But it never happened.

* 

Finally it came the day of the twins' seventh birthday. You've probably heard or read somewhere that seven is the age by which magic should have revealed itself. That's entirely true. But Shirley still hadn't shown any, and her father wasn't happy.

When the little girl joined her family in the huge dining room, expecting smiles, _Happy birthday_ wishes, presents and a huge slice of strawberry flavoured glassed cake, she found instead her father standing in front of her, with his arms crossed and a cold and cruel frown on his face.

"Lift it," he ordered glacially, nodding toward a bucket full of water on the ground she hadn't noticed before.

Shirley didn't understand the reason of the strange request, but she tried to comply anyway. She took the handle with both hands and pulled with all her strenght, but no matter how hard she tried, the bucket wouldn't move.

"It's too heavy!" she lamented, tears in her eyes for the effort.

"Lift it," her father repeated again, with the same glacial tone.

"I can't!"

"Lift it!" he all but shouted, and Shirley jumped back, startled. "Lift it, you useless Muggle, or don't you dare show your face in front of me again!"

The poor girl didn't understand what was happening. She searched the rest of the family with her gaze for help, but no one seemed willing to help her. Her mother was staring intently at a spot on the table, as still as a Basilisk victim except for the slight tremble of her lower lip. And her brother was sneering without restraint, as if he found all the situation highly entertaining, which he did.

All Shirley could think of doing was to run away.

* 

Brian's parents' seventh anniversary was the day when Buster was deemed old enough to go his own way. It was also the day when Brian was granted permission of leaving the attic for the first time.

Excitement filled the young Boggart, something Boggarts usually can't understand. But, as we said, Brian wasn't the regular Boggart.

A whole new world presented itself before him, made of polished marbles, and colourful tapestries, and crystal chandeliers. Everything looked so different, so beautiful, so full of life and wonder, compared to the dark, boring space of the dusty attic he'd been confined into for so long.

Suddenly a new flash of colour caught his sight. Turquoise, and pink, and gold. At first Brian didn't realize what it was, then he understood he'd just met a human. The thought scared him, and as an unconditioned reflex he turned into the thing the human feared the most.

The human in question happened to be little Shirley, and the thing she feared the most at the moment was the horrible, hateful stare of her father.

"Leave me alone!" she screamed at her father, who wasn't really her father, because it was only Brian pretending to be her father, but she couldn't know that, since she'd never met Brian, or a Boggart in general, before.

"Leave me alone!" she screamed, anyway. "Why are you so mean? Why do you hate me?"

Brian blinked in stupor, using Shirley's father's eyes, because Boggarts don't have eyes to blink with.

"I don't hate you," he said.

And then, overcome the initial shock, he started changing to his original unshaped shape, while Shirley stared at him wide-eyed, using her own blue eyes, because fortunately she did have eyes to do that!

"You're not my Dad!" she exclaimed surprised.

_No, I'm not,_ Brian confirmed, with his cavernous voice that scared himself a little.

"But what are you, then?"

_I'm a Boggart. My name is Brian. And what are you?_

"I'm a girl. My name is Shirley. Nice to meet you."

She extended her hand and he reshaped himself so that he had a hand too to shake hers.

* 

Nobody really knows what happened after that. The only certain fact is that neither Brian nor Shirley were ever seen again in that ancient, imposing manor where the Selwyns once had their residence. Brian's parents, anguished, searched for him far and wide around the house, often coming across the humans and scaring them so badly they eventually transferred in yet another ancient, imposing manor.

Many theories were formed about the young Boggart and Squib. Some people think they found an abandoned farmhouse and settled there, and Brian often posed as a scarecrow to protect their crop. Some other say they joined a circus and traveled around the world, earning a living as Muggle trapeze artists. Some other even sustain that Shirley found a job as a broomstick maker apprentice and she invented a model powerful enough to bring them both on the moon.

What really happened to them, we'll never know for sure. But we can confidently affirm this. That they lived happily, wholly and freely ever after.


End file.
